


there is no peace here; war is never cheap, dear

by kitmarlowed



Category: Kings
Genre: Dreams, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-19
Updated: 2013-12-19
Packaged: 2018-01-05 05:23:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1090102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitmarlowed/pseuds/kitmarlowed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack dreams, sometimes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	there is no peace here; war is never cheap, dear

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ishyko](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ishyko/gifts).



Jack doesn’t normally remember his dreams.

Normally, here, is the operative, that one word that gives the sentence it’s meaning - he remembers _some._

x.

What happens in this dream doesn’t shock him. He’s thought about it, wanted it, even, before; the dream just serves as proof that he wants it still.

It’s David, it’s always David, everywhere he looks, everything he hears, but this is not real. This is the hotsweetdark rush of skin and movement. This is everything Jack knows he should not want and cannot have. He watches his own hands bruise and mark, watches as David gives and quite right too, really.

Jack’s the fucking prince. And the prince _takes_.

_we give up what we want_ says his father’s voice in his head when he wakes, breathing harsh gasps and small sounds.

Jack doesn’t sleep again that night.

ix.

He’s running, he can’t remember why, what from or what to, but he’s running and he isn’t alone. Shepherd runs with him and Jack has the urge to smile, to join their hands, to pull or be pulled to wherever they’re going or away from whatever they’ve left. He doesn’t smile, but Shepherd does, he doesn’t link their hands, but Shepherd does. He laughs, Shepherd laughs, and they keep running.

When they jump from the cliff Jack doesn’t hit the sea, doesn’t feel the water, cool and blue as it looked. Shepherd had jumped with him, he supposes Shepherd might have made it.

Jack sees the walls of his bedroom, sees the clock on the wall.

Laughter and the sea ring in his ears.

viii.

“D’you ever dream about it?” David asks. “The fighting, the fields-”

“The pain, the cold, the darkness? No,” says Jack, bravado firm and unrelenting, “of course I don’t. Drink and party enough, Shepherd, and you find it hard to dream.”  
David frowns, creases form around his mouth and Jack doesn’t smile so much as smirk.

“If you’re having trouble talk to my sister,” he says, picking up the paper he’d stopped reading. “I’m sure she’ll be more than happy to help you.”

“I don’t want to worry her.”

Jack laughs, a little bitter or frustrated or exasperated or mean, says, “You don’t always have to be noble, Shepherd. She worries everyone else, turn it around.” He hopes he doesn’t snarl this last.

vii.

Gunfire sounds loud enough to wake him up and Jack cries out, draws breaths like knives into his lungs, heaving his chest, telling himself to get up, grab a gun, put on his boots and join the fighting.

A hand on his trembling one stills him, and David Shepherd manages a small smile around the words: “c’mon, Jack, they’re dead anyway.”

He lets David lead him away, they cross the lines and Jack has to stop himself from balking, from turning back, from screaming. Because they’re deserting, that’s what this is - isn’t it? He’s letting someone lead him astray. He carries on letting, David’s small, sly smile is infectious.

Jack wakes up and he isn’t frightened this time for anything but his soul.

vi.

He sees a man formed out of butterflies, tall and strong and crowned. The flight moves towards him, a simulation of walking with an arm reaching out.

This is crazy, another of his improbable dreams, but he’s transfixed as the butterfly-man moves toward him - he wonders what damage a swarm can do.

v.

Jack holds David’s wrists above his head and presses open mouthed kisses onto the fever hot skin of his neck.

Whimpers that would normally be pathetic instead send Jack into shivering, they both shift and arch and it's a greater release than he's known even if it's not the best sex he's ever had. It's a radical shift, game changing, it hardly shatters the earth but his father would flip and well, if that isn't an incentive what the hell is?

"Jack," David breathes, "please I-"

Jack curls his lip, gives a languid roll of his hips, says, "What, Shepherd, what do you want?" He moves his hips again, laughs, “more of this?” bends down to suck a blood bruise on the hollow of David’s collarbone (David whimpers again and moves his own hips for blessed friction).

“Anything,” David sighs, “just don’t stop.”

Jack wakes hard and breathless. The shame creeps as a flush up to his neck.

iv.

“For God’s sake,” Jack starts, “let us sit upon the ground.”

David smiles, says, “Richard II, Shakespeare.”

“A study in how not to be king,” Jack continues and David laughs, quiet conscience, says, “I wouldn’t know, really,” and Jack thinks he hates him more, then, to see the willing and honest self-deprecation of the man who is stealing everything from him and isn’t that just the way. The Bolingbroke to his Richard and he’s done nothing fucking wrong, stolen no titles and no lands.

Jack suppresses the urge to snarl, to fight and kick out like a wounded child because he isn’t one and this is just some stupid comparison to a worthless king. He is not and never will be worthless, no matter the cost.

iii.

David kisses him in a dark corner of the club, away from the lights and the noise and the buzz and it’s tentative - he’s unsure and Jack want to push him away but he can’t quite bring himself to. The kiss is sweet, alcohol and naïveté mingle and mix with their breaths and Jack struggles to keep himself back, to stop from throwing Shepherd against the wall and kissing him properly.

Jack has dreamt of many different versions of that night and his imaginings run from chaste to downright pornographic. This one was the sweetest of them. Just a moment.

ii.

When Jack kisses David he’s not dreaming and the scene has shifted to the gardens at night, a darkness both familiar and strange.

David starts at first, makes an aborted attempt to extricate but Jack is patient, and, much to his surprise when David give in he does not yield so much as attack. It’s close and harsh and a rush and David is silent while Jack moans into his mouth.

The aftermath is typical, David comes back to himself and stares before turning tail.

Jack curses himself for imagining anything different.

i.

Things fall apart;

The centre cannot hold.

**Author's Note:**

> hope you like it :)


End file.
